Neewer NW-ETZ vs Megadap ETZ21 Pro | Sony E to Nikon Z Adapter Showdown
Dustin Abbott
November 29th, 2024
Neewer NW-ETZ vs Megadap ETZ21 Pro | Sony E to Nikon Z Adapter Showdown
When I first started using Sony E-mount, I was coming off a period of more than a decade where I had used the Canon EF ecosystem exclusively. It was a delight to find that there were adapters that would allow me to use my Canon lenses on my Sony camera as well. I used and reviewed a number of popular adapters from brands like Metabones, Sigma, and Vello, but found that they all came with some serious limitations. Over time I tired of used my EF lenses adapted for two primary reasons: 1) size and weight. 2) Inadequate performance. My favorite of the adapters proved to be the Sigma MC-11, but it added 125g to the weight of every lens attached to it and added another 26mm in length. This was necessary to adapt a DSLR mount to a mirrorless design. The optical path needs to be in a completely different place, so the optics need to be moved further away from the sensor to achieve proper infinity focus. I found that there was a huge spectrum of performance, too, with some lenses working fairly well and others being very inconsistent. Video AF, in particular, was pretty rough where it existed at all.
But over a series of reviews, I’ve been looking at very different types of adapters that now adapt one mirrorless lens mount (Sony E-mount) to another mirrorless lens mount (Nikon Z-mount). The rules are a bit different this time. For one, the “flange distance” between the two mounts is similar, so now the adapter itself is just a few millimeters thick (2mm, to be exact), adding almost no additional bulk to lenses. There is a bit of weight, but, at 43g for the Megadap ETZ21 Pro on my scale and 46g for the Neewer NE-ETZ, it’s a third of what we dealt with the EF to FE adapters. In my tests, the Megadap EZ21 Pro (my review here) has a few advantages over the Neewer NW-ETZ that I reviewed here, but also costs about $100 more. So which is the better buy? Find out my thoughts by watching the head to head video, or you can see a quick summary in the article below.
Thanks to Neewer for providing a review sample of the NW-ETZ and to Megadap for providing a review sample the ETZ21 Pro. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.
Both of these adapters have a simple premise – allow you to use Sony E-mount lenses – WITH AUTOFOCUS – on Nikon Z mount cameras. The claim includes transmitting EXIF data and information for VR (if your camera is so equipped). At their best, both adapters work really quite well, delivering some of the best autofocus I’ve seen from an adapted lens, though there’s always limits. Both add almost no bulk – just 2mm of additional thickness – and very little weight (43g for the Megadap, 46g for the Neewer).
So does they work? The answer is mostly yes, though with a few minor caveats which I detail in the individual reviews.
Reasons to Buy the Neewer NW-eTZ
Price – Costs $160 vs $250
Has a weather sealed option for $20 more
Provides focus confirmation for manual focus lenses even when they have no contacts (M42, M mount, etc…)
Reasons to buy the Megadap ETZ21 Pro
Better firmware process
Properly reports EXIF data
Provides more consistent autofocus performance
Works on APS-C/DX bodies
Works with more lenses
Conclusion
Both adapters have some unique strengths, but for most people I think the extra money for the Megadap is worth it. The Neewer shows promise, but it is a first gen adapter while Megadap is on the second variation of their second generation, and that longer development cycle shows. Megadap has squashed more bugs, and delivers a more consistent performance across a broader range of lenses. Megadap is an adapter company, period, and while Neewer has a great reputation for delivering excellent products at a strong value, their company is far more diversified. To me the Megadap adapter feels worth the extra $90, but it’s not my money to spend. It’s yours, and I hope the information in these comparisons has helped you make a more informed decision.
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
When I first started using Sony E-mount, I was coming off a period of more than a decade where I had used the Canon EF ecosystem exclusively. It was a delight to find that there were adapters that would allow me to use my Canon lenses on my Sony camera as well. I used and reviewed a number of popular adapters from brands like Metabones, Sigma, and Vello, but found that they all came with some serious limitations. Over time I tired of used my EF lenses adapted for two primary reasons: 1) size and weight. 2) Inadequate performance. My favorite of the adapters proved to be the Sigma MC-11, but it added 125g to the weight of every lens attached to it and added another 26mm in length. This was necessary to adapt a DSLR mount to a mirrorless design. The optical path needs to be in a completely different place, so the optics need to be moved further away from the sensor to achieve proper infinity focus. I found that there was a huge spectrum of performance, too, with some lenses working fairly well and others being very inconsistent. Video AF, in particular, was pretty rough where it existed at all.
But over a series of reviews, I’ve been looking at very different types of adapters that now adapt one mirrorless lens mount (Sony E-mount) to another mirrorless lens mount (Nikon Z-mount). The rules are a bit different this time. For one, the “flange distance” between the two mounts is similar, so now the adapter itself is just a few millimeters thick (2mm, to be exact), adding almost no additional bulk to lenses. There is a bit of weight, but, at 46g on my scale, it’s a third of what we dealt with the EF to FE adapters. In my tests, the Megadap EZ21 Pro has a few advantages over the Neewer NW-ETZ that I’m, reviewing today, but also costs about $100 more. So is the Neewer NW-ETZ and its $160 price a better choice if you’re on a budget? Find out my thoughts by watching the video review below…or just keep reading.
Thanks to Neewer for providing a review sample of the NW-ETZ. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.
There will be some continuity between this review and another of the Megadap ETZ21 Pro, as I’ve spent time with both in an attempt to get up to speed as to which adapter works better.
There are two versions of the NW-ETZ adapter; a regular version (like the one I’m testing here) and a Pro version that costs about $20 more. The primary difference to the Pro version seems to be the inclusion of a weather sealing gasket, which is a negative point I raised about the Megadap adapter in my review of that lens.
For some reason, however, user reviews tend to be higher for the cheaper adapter without the rubber gasket. Perhaps the fit is a little better without it, as functionally these should be the same.
The premise of the NW-ETZ adapter is pretty simple – it interprets the focus algorithms from the camera (Nikon Z) and translates them to the language of the lens (Sony E), and carries EXIF data and focus information back to the camera. The byproduct is that you can get effective autofocus from Sony E-mount lenses on a Nikon Z mount body…and there’s a lot of great Sony E-mount glass out there!
So does it work? The answer is a little more complicated than what I saw with the Megadap ETZ21 Pro in my review, as I saw a wider variety of performances. Initially, I actually thought that it might work better for stills, as I found that autofocus with the first two lenses that I used (Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM and Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8 VXDE) was arguably better than the Megadap.
But as I expanded out the pool of lenses that I used, I found that my results varied more widely. I’ll detail more about that in the review below.
Build and Design
As noted previously this is a pretty simple device in some ways. Essentially it feels like a metal lens mount detached from a lens.
At just 2mm thick, it essentially just goes onto the lens like a second mount.
You really won’t notice that the adapter is there once mounted, and I found that in the half dozen lenses that I tested with it, mounting and unmounting lenses remained relatively simple. The fit of lenses will vary a bit, with some being tighter than others, but I never felt like I really had to force things.The adapter is very, very thin. Always be sure to power down the camera before removing anything, however.
The release mechanism is different from the Megadap’s, as that release needs to be depressed while the NW-ETZ requires sliding the mechanism clockwise.
The magic of the adapter is the dual sets of electronic contacts front and back. On the backside you will see the electronic contacts for communicating with the Nikon camera. There is a second set of contacts that says, “Update” above it, and this is for doing firmware updates. There is an included cable that magnetically attaches to the larger circles and then data is transferred to the adapter. The other end of the cable is a USB-A connector.
I did do a firmware update, and found that the magnetic attachment wasn’t quite as strong as what I would have liked. You need to be sure that the cable doesn’t hang down in between the adapter and your computer, as it will pull the contacts away from having a firm connection. I actually held the cable tight to the adapter during the review.
The actual update was just a matter of dragging the firmware update file into the folder for the adapter that pops up once the connection is made. There isn’t really any kind of reaction, but if you let it sit for a minute, then eject the folder and reconnect, you’ll find that the update has in fact happened.
The front of the adapter has the pins that will come in contact with the Sony E-mount lenses.
Presumably there is some kind of processor hidden in there to do the focus algorithm conversions.
The Megadap adapter definitely bests the Newer in one regard: it accurately delivers the EXIF information, whereas the Neewer seems to try to find a Nikon equivalent.
Both of the images in the comparison were shot with the Tamron 35-150mm F2-F2.8 VXD, and the Megadap shows the proper lens designation (including A058, Tamron’s internal code for the lens), while the Neewer reported VR 35-150mm F2-2.8G, which is clearly not accurate (this is not a G lens, nor does it have VR). The Megadap also reported properly for the two Sony lenses I tested, the Sigma lens, and the Viltrox lens. The Neewer reported the Sony lenses as VR 35mm F1.4G and VR 50mm F1.4G, while the Megadap properly recorded them as FE 35mm and 50mm F1.4 GM, respectively.
Still, for a relatively low amount of money, you can mount your E-mount lenses on your Nikon camera and enjoy autofocus.
Manual Focus Aids?
The Neewer NW-ETZ has an additional trick up its sleeve that the Megadap lacks. If you attach manual focus lenses (even those without electronic contacts), the NW-ETZ serves to provide electronic communication, giving you focus confirmation and even allowing Nikon’s focus guide to work (which prompts you which direction to turn the manual focus ring to achieve proper focus).
I had a lot of fun with my Thypoch Simera 28mm F1.4 (an M-mount lens), but utilizing an adapter from M-mount to E-mount, and then using the NW-ETZ to complete the journey to Z-mount. It was easy to nail focus, and the focus confirmation proved very accurate.
You can see just how precise that focus was here:
Somewhat disappointing, however, is that even while my Z8 camera allows me to manually enter the EXIF information for a lens like this (and I went to the trouble to do so!), the adapter reported the lens as 50mm F1G – not correct in any detail!
But this was unquestionably a nice hidden feature, as this worked for any fully manual (no electronics) lens that I tried, whether it was E-mount, M42, or M-mount. Just use an additional adapter to E-mount (if needed), and the NW-ETZ provides the electronics. Pretty cool!
Stills Autofocus with the NW-ETZ
When reviewing the Megadap ETZ21 Pro, I found that my focus results were pretty consistent. Lenses with faster focus motors focused faster, obviously, and more confident autofocusing lenses worked better at the extremes. My findings are more nuanced with the NW-ETZ, as some lenses worked fantastically, while others didn’t really work particularly well.
I tested the Sony 35mm and 50mm F1.4 G Master lenses, the Tamron 90mm F2.8 Macro, 28-200mm RXD, and the 35-150mm VXD, the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DN, and the Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 and 135mm F1.8 LAB.
What’s wild is that my results were not consistent within brands. Let’s start with the two Sony lenses. The 35mm F1.4 GM works pretty much like a native lens, with fast, accurate results.
The very similar 50mm F1.4 GM behaved very differently. It focuses slowly and gradually, and with close focus targets I almost exclusively got results like this:
I would have to use manual override (which works great on Nikon, by the way) to get focus in the right zone, where autofocus would mostly do its job, getting me this properly focused result.
So your perception of the adapter is really going to depend on which lens you have attached to it. My initial impression (based on the 35mm) was the Neewer adapter might be better than the Megadap, but when I switched the 50mm, I was changing focus options, checking connections, and wondering if I was using the same adapter.
So, on the positive list. Outside the 35mm GM, I had very good results with the Tamron 35-150mm VXD. We used the combination for a church service and baptism, and I got fairly similar results to what I would have gotten normally with the lens on a Sony body. Very slightly slower, perhaps a hair less accurate, but perfectly usable.
The Tamron 90mm F2.8 Macro VXD also worked brilliantly, delivering results not far from what I would expect from a native lens.
I even found that I didn’t have the issues with focus not wanting to grab a foreground subject, so in this regard I found that it worked better than what I saw with the Megadap.
But when I put the Tamron 28-200mm RXD, I got absolutely terrible results, with focus basically not happening regardless of what I did to try to coax it along. I basically was resorting to manual override to get anything in focus.
In the case of Tamron lenses (at least the three I tested), it seems like the adapter likes the newer VXD motor, but doesn’t like the older RXD motor of the 28-200mm.
Ironically, however, the STM focus motor of the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DN (definitely not the latest and greatest technology) worked fine, with the Sigma delivering good speed and precision.
Finally, the Viltrox 16mm F1.8 worked perfectly, delivering accurate results even against strong backlighting.
The new 135mm F1.8 LAB lens sports a VCM motor that is similar in technology to the Tamron VXD focus motor, but the 135 LAB refused to focus at all, instead emitting a whine and refusing to do anything.
In the video review you can see my formal tests with the 35GM and 50GM, and how radically different the result with these two similar lenses is.
In other words, the results were all over the map. When a lens works on the Neewer NW-ETZ, it tends to work really well, but results are obviously much more inconsistent. It’s still generally true that better focusing lenses are going to make the transition better. That makes sense, as really the adapter’s job is to send the correct communications from the lens to the AF system via the contacts, so a fast focusing lens should continue to be a fast focusing lens, with the only real slowdown being from the need to “reinterpret” the focus algorithms from one language (Sony) to another (Nikon). The wild card in the mix here is that a fantastically focusing lens like the Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM isn’t really all that great via the Neewer adapter, but was pretty great via the Megadap adapter.
Now, to be fair, you could eventually get the focus results you wanted with most lenses (save those that just really refused to work), like this lovely shot with the 50GM below.
But in many situations I felt like I could achieve greater success with the Megadap adapter.
Video Autofocus
*These results will be easier to see in the video review for obvious reasons.
The good news is that if you have a lens that focuses well for stills, you will also get fairly decent video AF. I did a series of test with the two GM lenses, and found that AF didn’t pick me up at all as I walked towards the camera with the 50mm F1.4 GM attached via the NW-ETZ.
With the 35mm F1.4 GM the combo tracked me perfectly, and even quickly picked me when I stepped out and back into frame.
I then tested focus pulls with the more functional lens (35GM), and found that I could generally get decent focus pulse, but I found that I encountered more pulsing during focus pulls, which is generally a byproduct of focus not being confident enough to lock.
So, as before, you’ll get your best results for video AF when using more confident lenses. I wouldn’t call video AF “native” in performance, but I would call it good enough…so long as you are using one of the lenses that the adapter likes.
Conclusion
Switching to a new camera brand can be a daunting experience, as the sheer cost of selling what you have (typically at a significant loss) and then rebuying everything for the new brand is expensive. The Neewer NW-ETZ is an inexpensive ways to bridge that gap. You can keep using the lenses you love without adding any bulk and only minimal weight, and that weight is right up close to the camera where you won’t notice it anyway. I also really like the potential benefit for manual focus lenses and the idea of getting a focus confirmation chip as a free bonus.
After a stellar start, I was disappointed that I got somewhat inconsistent results as I widened my pool of lenses. On the lenses where the adapter worked well, it worked really well, delivering fast, accurate autofocus.
But in other cases, I was obviously much less impressed. The Megadap seems like the safer choice to me, though you will have to pony up an extra $100. Perhaps that’s because the Megadap is two generations in, while this is Neewer’s first shot. I think there’s a lot of potential here, because when it works, it works really well, but there are definitely some bugs left to squash.
Pros:
Love how compact the adapter is
Manual focus electronic confirmation is a nice bonus
Autofocus for stills (with lenses it likes) is generally very good
Was able to track some action during video capture
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Megadap ETZ21 Pro Sony E to Nikon Z Adapter Review
Dustin Abbott
November 25th, 2024
Megadap ETZ21 Adapter Review
When I first started using Sony E-mount, I was coming off a period of more than a decade where I had used the Canon EF ecosystem exclusively. It was a delight to find that there were adapters that would allow me to use my Canon lenses on my Sony camera as well. I used and reviewed a number of popular adapters from brands like Metabones, Sigma, and Vello, but found that they all came with some serious limitations. Over time I tired of used my EF lenses adapted for two primary reasons: 1) size and weight. 2) Inadequate performance. My favorite of the adapters proved to be the Sigma MC-11, but it added 125g to the weight of every lens attached to it and added another 26mm in length. This was necessary to adapt a DSLR mount to a mirrorless design. The optical path needs to be in a completely different place, so the optics need to be moved further away from the sensor to achieve proper infinity focus. I found that there was a huge spectrum of performance, too, with some lenses working fairly well and others being very inconsistent. Video AF, in particular, was pretty rough where it existed at all.
But here we are again looking at a new type of adapter, in this case adapting one mirrorless lens mount (Sony E-mount) to another mirrorless lens mount (Nikon Z-mount). The rules are a bit different this time. For one, the “flange distance” between the two mounts is similar, so now the adapter itself is just a few millimeters thick (2mm, to be exact), adding almost no additional bulk to lenses. There is a bit of weight, but, at 43g on my scale, it’s a third of what we dealt with the EF to FE adapters. And the performance seems to be better, too, with even some usable (though not flawless) performance for video. So is the Megadap ETZ21 Pro worth a $250 investment? Find out my thoughts by watching the video review below…or just keep reading.
Thanks to Megadap for providing a review sample of the ETZ21 Pro. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.
There will be some continuity between this review and another of the Neewer NW-ETZ adapter, as I’ve spent time with both in an attempt to get up to speed as to which adapter works better.
I’m reviewing the more recent ETZ21 Pro. There was previously an ETZ21 adapter as well that some of you may already own. What’s changed from the standard adapter to the Pro adapter?
There are two significant improvements. One is that rather than having to do firmware updates through a separate process, you can now run firmware updates through the camera body just as you would a Nikon lens. The second major improvement is to the mechanical design to allow for a better fit for Tamron lenses (and other third party lenses as well). There’s also a redesign to the lens release button to allow for a smoother mount/unmount process. Megadap repeatedly emphasizes that the performance of both adapters is the same, so this isn’t going to change the autofocus performances in any appreciable way.
In my research, I found that Megadap has released 5 firmware updates in the past year, which is encouraging, as that shows an ongoing commitment to improving their product not just via new releases. Improvements include squashing bugs with certain lenses, improving function, adding compatibility with new brands, and helping to eliminate issues like battery drain.
So does it work? The short answer is “yes”, and in many situations autofocus is remarkably ordinary. The shot above was taken with the ETZ21 Pro allowing my Sony FE 50mm F1.4 G Master (a beautiful lens!) to work on my Nikon Z8. And how precise is that focus at F1.4? Take a look here:
So let’s dive a little deeper.
Build and Design
As noted previously this is a pretty simple device in some ways. Essentially it feels like a metal lens mount detached from a lens.
At just 2mm thick, it essentially just goes onto the lens like a second mount.
You really won’t notice that the adapter is there once mounted, and I found that in the half dozen lenses that I tested with it, mounting and unmounting lenses remained relatively simple. Lenses fit well without any wobble. I prefer to remove the lens from the camera before removing the adapter from the lens, as there isn’t much left to grab from the camera mount once the lens is removed. The adapter is very, very thin. Always be sure to power down the camera before removing anything, however.
The improved release mechanism works nicely, and isn’t hard to depress for removing lenses.
The magic of the adapter is the dual sets of electronic contacts you can see at the back of the adapter. One is the backside of the Sony contacts, while the most prominent contacts (on the top of the image below) are the Nikon Z-mount contacts.
The front of the adapter has the pins that will come in contact with the Sony E-mount lenses.
Presumably there is some kind of processor hidden in there to do the focus algorithm conversions, though I wasn’t able to find any information on that.
The Megadap adapter definitely bests the Newer in one regard: it accurately delivers the EXIF information, whereas the Neewer seems to try to find a Nikon equivalent.
Both of the images in the comparison were shot with the Tamron 35-150mm F2-F2.8 VXD, and the Megadap shows the proper lens designation (including A058, Tamron’s internal code for the lens), while the Neewer reported VR 35-150mm F2-2.8G, which is clearly not accurate (this is not a G lens, nor does it have VR). The Megadap also reported properly for the two Sony lenses I tested, the Sigma lens, and the Viltrox lens. The Neewer reported the Sony lenses as VR 35mm F1.4G and VR 50mm F1.4G, while the Megadap properly recorded them as FE 35mm and 50mm F1.4 GM, respectively.
Megadap reports that at the moment their adapter is the only one to work with Nikon DX (APS-C) cameras, though that will almost certainly change in the future.
One final observation – you will be covering the weather sealing gasket on your Sony FE mount lens, if so equipped, and the adapter itself has no gasket, so there is some possibility that your weather sealing may not be as complete with the adapter in place, so bear that in mind.
Stills Autofocus with the ETZ21 Pro
I’ve been interested in seeing how these adapters work with good Sony lenses, including the 35mm and 50mm GM lenses, but also how they work with some third party lenses, including popular lenses from Tamron, Sigma, and Viltrox.
Let’s start with a practical test. I took the the Sony 50mm F1.4 GM on a hike using the ETZ21 Pro on my Z8, and also had an inexpensive Yongnuo YN 33mm F1.4 mounted on a Sony body. Both combos, in theory, shake out to about the same thing, as the YN 33mm is an APS-C lens, leaving a 50mm equivalence. Autofocus in bare form would obviously favor the GM lens, which has multiple XD (Extreme Dynamic) linear motors whereas the Yongnuo has a more basic single STM focus motor. In many situations the adapted Sony lens worked about as well as the Yongnuo (which actually focuses quite well), with one exception that stood out to me. When attempting to focus on a close subject, the Megadap combo would often stick on the background, requiring me to try to find a more obvious (bigger, higher contrast) subject in about the same focus distance I wanted and then going back to the desired subject. If I didn’t do that, focus looked like this:
The correct focus (which I achieved by pointing the camera basically at the ground first and then returning to correct subject. Focus would lock accurately then.) looks like this:
It’s worth noting that the Yongnuo in shooting the exact same shot immediately locked on the correct focus point.
Now clearly the GM lens delivered a superior looking image than the cheaper lens, but it does go to show that even an inexpensive native lens is going to autofocus a little better than an adapted lens in this situation.
Still, however, I was able to get all the shots that I wanted on my hike, and the end results were accurately focused. Shots like these ferns that still provided a pop of green in the mid-November death of vegetation.
Or this bare branch with just enough moss growing on it to provide a nice subtle color contrast against the background.
These shots were all at F1.4, but I also had good results when shooting landscape shots at smaller apertures.
So, I think I can safely say that autofocus accuracy is not a problem. At the margins, however, I think you’ll find a few places where autofocus doesn’t quite match what’s possible with a native lens.
What’s interesting, however, is that if you have a high speed autofocus system on Sony, you will continue to get fast autofocus on Nikon via adapter. I compared the focus speed of the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 lens and that the of Sony 50mm F1.4 GM lens via adapter back to back on my Z8, and there was no question that the focus speed (and arguably confidence) in this test actually favored the GM lens.
That makes sense, as really the adapter’s job is to send the correct communications from the lens to the AF system via the contacts, so a fast focusing lens should continue to be a fast focusing lens, with the only real slowdown being from the need to “reinterpret” the focus algorithms from one language (Sony) to another (Nikon). So a faster focusing lens (Sony GM) bests a slower focusing lens (Nikkor Z 50mm) even if there is a slight slowdown due to focus algorithms.
But what about the same lens? I had a unique opportunity to compare the Z-mount version of the Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 with an adapter E-mount version of the same lens since I happened to have both of them on hand. In a pure focus test, I definitely found that the Z-mount version focused faster, with the adapted E-mount version being a little slower. Both would be fast enough for real world use, however.
I was also interested in seeing if the adapter affected the optical performance. In theory, it shouldn’t really affect sharpness, as there is no optical elements in the adapter themselves. No elements should mean no effect upon sharpness. As far as what I actually found, I don’t think there is any optical degradation. When I did a side by side comparison between the E-mount and Nikon Z-mount version of the Viltrox 16mm I found that there was just some give and take. I found the Z-mount version was a little sharper in the center…
…but the corner favored the E-mount version:
In other words, no consistent difference. I shot at different apertures and got similar results.
What I did find on a practical level was that when I was using the adapter I tended to get a bit of underexposure. I saw this when I compared the Viltrox 16mm lenses (the adapted lens metered at 1/400th, while the native mount lens metered at 1/250th), but I also saw it when just shooting during my hike. I ended up using exposure compensation for the second half of my hike and found that using 2/3rds of a stop of exposure compensation actually produced what I considered accurate exposure.
I didn’t see any kind of additional issues with flare or aberrations.
I was able to successfully use the Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM (fast focus due to being a fast focusing lens), and got good results with the Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8 VXD (fast, but not GM level fast), with good but slightly slower results coming with the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DN due to having a single STM focus motor.
Bottom line: the autofocus speed for stills you’ll get will depend a lot on the initial autofocus speed of the lens you’re adapting. Everything is slightly slower, but the better focusing lenses are fast enough that they are still fast even if you slow them down a bit.
At the same time, I wouldn’t want to rely on this combination for tracking fast action. Even with Nala trotting towards me at a moderately fast pace, I found that photos were fairly close but almost always backfocused a bit.
I think it is important to stay realistic about what adapted lenses can and cannot do. For most tasks, autofocus is plenty good enough. For fast action, with long telephotos, or for things like birding, I would say that using a native mount lenses is a smarter choice.
Video Autofocus
*These results will be easier to see in the video review for obvious reasons.
The good news is that you can still get autofocus during video capture, though there is a bit less confidence overall. I found that I encountered more pulsing during focus pulls, which is generally a byproduct of focus not being confident enough to lock. It would do a quick micropulse in the wrong direction sometimes.
I did a few tests walking towards the camera, and found that the results varied a bit. I did spot one principle difference with the Neewer NW-ETZ adapter, as I saw A) more reliable subject tracking with the Megadap adapter and B) seemed to get profile corrections in video with the Megadap but not the Neewer.
Using the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DN and its slightly slower autofocus motor I found that I got fairly decent tracking even at F1.4 as I walked towards the camera. Autofocus moved mostly smoothly with me and footage looked great. When I stepped out of frame, however, and focus moved to the background, autofocus did not pick me back up when I stepped back into frame.
I switched to the faster 50mm GM lens, and it was much more successful at picking me up when I stepped back in the frame.
So, as before, you’ll get your best results for video AF when using more confident lenses. This is definitely a far cry from the video AF experience I got back in the day adapting Canon EF lenses, though just know that if you put these adapted lenses in demanding situations you may be a bit disappointed, but for most work you’ll be just fine.
Conclusion
Switching to a new camera brand can be a daunting experience, as the sheer cost of selling what you have (typically at a significant loss) and then rebuying everything for the new brand is expensive. The Megadap ETZ21 Pro is a great way to bridge that gap, however, if you happen to be coming from Sony E-mount to Nikon Z. You can keep using the lenses you love without adding any bulk and only minimal weight, and that weight is right up close to the camera where you won’t notice it anyway.
Or perhaps you just have certain lenses that you love on E-mount but there isn’t an equivalent lens on Z-mount. The Megadap is a great way to use a favorite lens on two systems, or just keep an old friend to enjoy on a new platform.
Either way, this little adapter seems worth the money. It works effectively for stills other than not wanting to focus on a close subject periodically, and it even works surprisingly well for video, too, though perhaps not quite as seamlessly. My expectations were largely set by experience with former adapters, and I would say that the the Megadap ETZ21 Pro easily exceeded those. It’s a better adapting experience than any that I’ve personally experienced, matching even what I saw when adapting Canon EF to Canon RF mount using a Canon adapter. The fact that a third party adapter has pulled that off is pretty impressive, and I’ll personally enjoy using some of my favorite E-mount lenses on my Nikon camera(s) moving ahead.
Pros:
Love how compact the adapter is
Seems to enjoy a certain amount of first party support (firmware updates, lens profiles).
Improved lens release button makes adding or removing a lens easier
Autofocus for stills is generally very good
Was able to track some action during video capture
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
My time spent with the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 reminds of past eras where first party brands like Nikon and Canada often had three tiers of 50mm lenses: a “plastic fantastic” F1.8 option priced low and built cheap, a mid level F1.4 option, and then a premium F1.2 option. Nikon’s strategy on Z-mount has been a little different, as their initial 50mm release was the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.8 S lens, and that lens was priced (and sized) more like the mid-tier option at roughly $625 USD. That makes the new Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 lens a little harder to categorize, as it is about the same size as the F1.8 lens and priced a bit lower at right under $500 USD. And yet this also feels right, like the proper price and performance for a mid-tier lens. We’ve got the premium Nikkor Z 50mm F1.2 S in the $2000 zone, so it’s really the 50mm F1.8 that is the oddity. I like the Nikkor 50mm F1.4Z a lot (and I haven’t yet tested the 50mm F1.8 S as I’m new to the Nikon party), so the question is the release of this lens going to confuse potential buyers? Find out my thoughts by watching the video review, reading the text review, or by checking out the photos in the gallery below.
Thanks to Camera Canada for the loaner of the Nikkor 50mm F1.4. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.
My biggest takeaway from my time spent with the Nikkor 50mm F1.4Z is “enough”. I feel like Nikon has done a great job of giving us enough of everything – build, autofocus, and optical performance. Yes, there are higher performing 50mm lenses, but this lens feels like enough for most people in most situations, and thus it feels like a really good value to me for a first party F1.4 lens. I had no problem producing images that I liked with this lens.
I also appreciate how they’ve kept the size down. This lens weighs on 422g, which is lightweight enough that you could use it on a Zf body and not feel like it overmatched the camera. It feels positively svelte on my big Z8 body.
Put simply, this is a lens that I really like, and it didn’t hurt that it wasn’t really outclassed in many ways even though I reviewed it at the same time as the new Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM…a lens that costs $1000 more! So is the “enough” lens the one for you? Check out of the reviews if you want more info, or just enjoy the photos below.
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
My time spent with the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 reminds of past eras where first party brands like Nikon and Canada often had three tiers of 50mm lenses: a “plastic fantastic” F1.8 option priced low and built cheap, a mid level F1.4 option, and then a premium F1.2 option. Nikon’s strategy on Z-mount has been a little different, as their initial 50mm release was the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.8 S lens, and that lens was priced (and sized) more like the mid-tier option at roughly $625 USD. That makes the new Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 lens a little harder to categorize, as it is about the same size as the F1.8 lens and priced a bit lower at right under $500 USD. And yet this also feels right, like the proper price and performance for a mid-tier lens. We’ve got the premium Nikkor Z 50mm F1.2 S in the $2000 zone, so it’s really the 50mm F1.8 that is the oddity. I like the Nikkor 50mm F1.4Z a lot (and I haven’t yet tested the 50mm F1.8 S as I’m new to the Nikon party), so the question is the release of this lens going to confuse potential buyers? Find out my thoughts by watching the video review below…or just keep reading.
Thanks to Camera Canada for the loaner of the Nikkor 50mm F1.4. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.
My biggest takeaway from my time spent with the Nikkor 50mm F1.4Z is “enough”. I feel like Nikon has done a great job of giving us enough of everything – build, autofocus, and optical performance. Yes, there are higher performing 50mm lenses, but this lens feels like enough for most people in most situations, and thus it feels like a really good value to me for a first party F1.4 lens. I had no problem producing images that I liked with this lens.
I also appreciate how they’ve kept the size down. This lens weighs on 422g, which is lightweight enough that you could use it on a Zf body and not feel like it overmatched the camera. It feels positively svelte on my big Z8 body.
Put simply, this is a lens that I really like, and it didn’t hurt that it wasn’t really outclassed in many ways even though I reviewed it at the same time as the new Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM…a lens that costs $1000 more! So is the “enough” lens the one for you? Keep reading to find out.
Nikkor 50mm F1.4Z Build and Handling
As noted, the 50mm F1.4Z is a pretty lightweight lens at 422g or 14.9oz. It accomplishes that by being made of engineered plastics, yes, but also by being relatively compact. The lens is 76.2mm in diameter (3″) x 88.9 mm (3.5″) in length.
For some perspective, that’s about 4mm narrow and 8mm shorter than the Sony 50mm F1.4 GM, though the GM is obviously a more feature rich lens. The Nikkor lens is nearly 100g lighter, however. It’s relatively compact for a modern 50mm F1.4, but if you want to go small and light, you might want to consider the very compact 40mm F2 instead.
The front filter size is a relatively uncommon 62mm.
At least the 50mm F1.4Z has a metal lens mount! It also has decent weather sealing, with about 7 seal points by my count.
I will note that the gasket at the rear mount is so small as to be nearly undetectable. Nikon’s language on the lens listing is a little contradictory. They say, “Designed carefully considering dust and drip-resistant performance” but then add this caveat: Thorough dust and moisture-resistance is not guaranteed in all situations.” In other words, there’s some weather sealing here, but no guarantees if you push your luck. On their listing for the 50mm F1.2 S they are more confident in their language (The NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.2 S is extensively sealed to keep out dust and moisture, especially around the moving parts of the lens barrel. A little water won’t hurt a Z camera or lens, so go out and make the most of that rainy day) but does have a similar caveat in the fine print. I suspect this is just Nikon covering their rears if someone drops their camera into the ocean or pool!
There is a secondary ring on the lens barrel, which is Nikon’s control ring. There’s a different texture to this ring which makes it easy to differentiate from the wider ribbing on the manual focus ring. This control ring, like Canon’s control ring on their RF lenses, can be assigned from the camera to control aperture, shutter speed, ISO speed, or exposure compensation. Unlike Canon’s control ring, however, which has clicks or detents, the 50mm F1.4Z’s ring is declicked and moves smoothly. I typically use the control ring as a manual aperture ring, and I don’t actually love this particular ring for that. Without clicks it feels imprecise, and I find it very easy to blow right by the aperture value I’m looking for.
There are no switches or buttons on the lens barrel, but rather most of it is dominated by the wide manual focus ring. The feel of the ring is fairly good, with good damping and precision. I like Nikon’s options for controlling the behavior of the manual focus ring, allowing you to choose a linear response and your desired focus throw distance.
The aperture iris is made up of nine rounded blades, allowing for a circular aperture shape when the lens is stopped down.
As you stop the aperture down, the overall shape is “roundish” but you can slightly see the shape of the aperture blades.
There is a fairly deep lens hood included. There are ribs inside and a ridged grip section to make it easier to mount/unmount the lens.
We have got a closer that average minimum focus distance of right over 37cm which results in a very useful 0.17x magnification level.
You can see that the plane of focus isn’t particularly flat, however, so the area of sharpness occupies a thin area even with this two dimensional subject.
Stopping down a bit helps to improve up close performance, and here’s a shot at F2 and at the minimum focus distance.
I would consider that useful, particularly since the average for 50mm lenses tends to be in the 0.15x level. Both the 50mm F1.8 S and the 50mm F1.2 S are at that 0.15x level, so I appreciate the extra bit of magnification here.
There really aren’t a lot of 50mm F1.4 competitors on Z mount thus far, but even if they were, it’s hard to imagine them undercutting this price of $499 USD by much. I appreciate the restraint that Nikon has shown with the pricing here. The 50mm F1.4Z isn’t a fancy lens, but it feels like “enough” and the lens doesn’t feel cheap to me. All told I feel pretty solidly impressed by the lens.
Autofocus and Video
The Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 utilizes a stepping focus motor (STM) that is, for the most part, surprisingly fast. Focus changes happen very quickly whether indoors or outdoors, and most of the time you won’t think about autofocus at all because the job just gets done quickly and efficiently. I was able to track action sequences with good accuracy in a gym even shooting at F1.4. I shot bursts at 30FPS on my Z8 and got nearly perfectly focused long bursts.
I had very good results when shoot portraits, with beautiful focus on the eyes.
I shot backlit shots with very strong directional sun, and I had no problem getting accurate focuses at F1.4.
I used the new Godox AD200 Pro II strobe for this shot, and I continued to have accurate focus results even when shooting at F5.6:
I got accurate results when shooting in low light at F1.4. Focus didn’t seem to really slow down much.
There is a faint whirring sound if you put your ear right next to the lens barrel, but if I held the camera at chest level and racked focus here and there, I couldn’t hear anything. Focus speed in my formal tests was not instant but was nice and fast racking back and forth.
I’ve got no concerns for autofocus for stills.
Video Autofocus
My first test was video focus pulls, and I saw quick, confident pulls from one subject to another in my standard test. The pulls were tuned more towards speed than a slow, cinematic damping, but you could modify that a bit with camera settings. More importantly, I didn’t see any visible steps from the STM motor. There was an occasion little micropulse, but it was rare. I did shoot some low light 8K footage, however, and found an occasional rack in the wrong direction during pulls there, but that was a much more demanding scenario.
Focus breathing felt fairly well controlled. It’s there, but not anything ugly.
My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it was more of a mixed bag. I sometimes had a hard time convincing the camera/lens to focus on my hand (even what that was clearly the domination subject in frame), though other times it would transition fine. That’s fair consistent with what I’ve seen from Nikon relative to the typical performance I see on Sony or Canon. On a positive note, those transitions were smooth due to the relatively low focus breathing.
I had very good results when walking towards the camera, with consistent tracking of my face, and when I ducked out of frame and then back in, the lens was relatively quick in picking me back up. I’ve also used the lens for several review videos for my channel along with about four long format teaching sessions. In every case face tracking has been completely reliable.
I shot one clip where I was tracking dried grasses at F1.4 as they blew in the strong autumn wind. Focus did a great job of staying on the moving subject, as can be seen from the freeze frame above.
All told there is a lot to like here in the autofocus performance. It’s not a high end dual linear focus motor system like what is in my Sony 50mm F1.4 G Master lens, but again, for the money, this feels like more than enough performance to get the job done in just about every situations.
Image Quality Breakdown
The Nikkor Z 50mm F2 is an FX (full frame lens), though it can also be used on DX cameras where it will give a full frame equivalent of 75mm due to the 1.5x crop factor on DX. This is a relatively simple optical design of 10 elements in 7 groups, including one aspherical element. This is clearly not the same optical design as their older DSLR era AF-S 50mm F1.4, which had 8 elements in 7 groups. The MTF chart shows significant improvement all across the frame relative to that older lens.
I really liked the rendering from the Nikkor Z 40mm F2, but I was less impressed with the real world sharpness. Just based on the MTF charts, the 50mm F1.4Z shouldn’t really be sharper, but in real world practice I was perfect satisfied with the sharpness and contrast I got from the lens.
This is the opposite of a paper tiger; it looks better in reality than it does in an MTF chart, and I think the early user reviews reflect that.
This is not a perfectly corrected lens, as we’ll see below, but sometimes a bit of uncorrected aberrations actually allow a lens to have more character.
One of the areas that is not perfectly corrected is LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations), which show up as fringing before or after the plane of focus. You’ll definitely see some of that fringing.
I did see it in real world shots, too, particularly in the places where I have learned to look for it. One example is with fringing around the letters of the lens designation on the Pentax.
You’ll see a bit of a greenish fringe around specular highlights, too.
Lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame are essentially non-existent, so that won’t be a problem.
Unlike more highly correct lenses, you will have some issues with color fringing, though that can have a positive effect that we’ll highlight in a bit.
If we move on to vignette and distortion we find a tiny amount of barrel distortion which required just a +1 to correct for. It is both minimal and linear, so it corrects fine but would also be fine uncorrected in almost every application.
Vignette is another story. I had to add a +88 to correct for the vignette. That’s not as bad as the 40mm F2, but it isn’t great! The correction profile is able to make a clean correction of the vignette, though I will note any lens with high levels of vignette will result in some less clean corners when shooting at higher ISO values. Even shooting at ISO 3200 you’ll find that the amount of noise in the center of the frame is significantly less than in the corners of the frame because the corners have had to receive nearly four stops of additional correction.
We’ll move on to inspecting our test chart. This test has been done on a 45MP Nikon Z8 sensor. I use a high end tripod and two second camera delay to ensure vibration doesn’t affect images. Here’s a look at the test chart that we will examine at high magnification:
If we take a look at crops (at roughly 200%) at F2 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, we find that center performance is good, but the mid-frame and the corners are definitely much weaker.
The chart results look good but not necessarily great. You can see that the detail extends into the corners, but contrast looks weak there.
To me, however, real world results look better than what the chart shows. In this shot, for example, you can see that there is good 3D pop to the subject.
If we zoom in to the pixel level, we see that the subject looks nice and crisp.
The contrast from the lens will depend on the situation. In a F1.4 shot like the one below, there is a lot of subject on either side of the plane of focus, and the near monochrome subject allows more fringing (and lower contrast to show.
This shot is more two dimensional, with less out of the main plane of focus, and I think that contrast and detail looks better here, while the fringing is much less evident.
Here’s a distant shot at F1.4, and I actually find contrast and detail quite good.
Bottom line is that at close focus distances and shallower depth of field, you will get softer results with more fringing. Move even a bit further out and contrast and detail will improve.
As has been my theme in this review, I think that wide open sharpness is enough. I have tested and even own sharper 50mm lenses, but I’m finding that in most situations that I have the 50mm F1.4Z, I’ve been content with its output.
Stopping down to F2 will produce an obvious improvement in contrast in both the center:
…and more noticeably in the corners.
Contributing to that improved contrast is a reduction of the color fringing. It isn’t entirely gone by F2, but you can see in this side by side comparison that there is significantly less fringing both in the letters that occupy the plane of focus but also on the edges of the out of focus SLR in the background.
There’s a very mild improvement by F2.8, with a slightly larger improvement coming at F4.
Even at F2.8, however, I found real world results to be pretty fantastic. There’s plenty of detail and contrast in this F2.8 shot, and that’s true even in the crop from near the corner.
By typical landscape apertures of F5.6 and F8, you can expect nicely detail and contrast all across the frame.
Expect the typical diffraction pattern on high resolution cameras where the image is a little softer by F11 and softer still at the minimum aperture of F16, though frankly I’ve seen much worse when it comes to diffraction.
I noted a tradeoff for some uncorrected fringing, and that comes in the form of a softer background. Often lenses with a little less contrast and a little more fringing are able to produce softer, more pleasing backgrounds.
That’s certainly true at close focus distances, as the 50mm F1.4Z can produce very nicely blurred backgrounds.
I often use this lock for test shots because it’s an easily repeatable subject, and while the falloff isn’t exceptionally creamy here, overall the shot looks good.
The weakness for the rendering, in my opinion, is the transition zone between focus and complete defocus, as it can get a little “nervous” due to a bit too much outlining.
You can see a bit of this in the grasses in the lower left of this portrait shot, though in general I think that the bokeh quality is really pretty good from this lens.
When I consider that it is priced in a range often dominated by cheaper, third party lenses and also by F1.8 lenses, I feel like the quality of the rendering really stands up pretty well.
Colors also look nice, with good punch but some balance as well.
I find that some of Nikon’s color profiles are a little too biased towards magentas, but if I stick to Adobe’s color profiles I was generally happy with skintones.
Flare resistance seemed generally pretty good. I did shoot a number of strongly backlit portraits, and one of the lenses that I was testing during the portrait session flared very badly to the place where I didn’t consider the results overly usable. The Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 held up pretty well by comparison in those conditions, however, giving just a bit of a ghosting pattern at F1.4 but generally pretty flawless when stopped down a bit.
The sunstar/sunburst effect also looked pretty decent in the shots above with a smaller aperture (F5.6 range).
One thing that you shouldn’t buy the lens for is to shoot stars. Coma smear in the corners is pretty bad, with the star points looking like pterodactyls surrounded by a blue glow.
The effect is reduced but not eliminated by F2.
So not a flawless optical performance, but the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 certainly bests the average 50mm F1.4 lens from the DSLR era by a good margin. I wouldn’t call any of its flaws fatal, and I generally liked the images I was able to produce with the lens. It feels like an easy lens to reach for those family moments you want to capture, for walking around when you feel like shooting 50mm, and for portrait work in this range. You can check out more photos by visiting the image gallery here.
Conclusion
In the mirrorless space the typical 50mm F1.4 has skewed up market, with Sony’s G Master costing $1300, Canon’s new RF 50mm F1.4L at $1400, and even Sigma’s 50mm F1.4 DN (not yet available for Z mount) pricing in at $850. All of these lenses have nicer builds, more features, more sophisticated autofocus systems, and superior optics, but they are also all bigger and heavier than the Nikkor lens. I suspect that the Nikkor 50mm F1.4Z will be “enough” for a lot of satisfied users.
I think that what has pleased me the most about this lens is how rare it is in the mirrorless space. We have mostly had to choose between plastic fantastic F1.8 lenses and then ultra expensive premium options, with very few lenses like this in between. Yes, a lens like this may lack some of the bells and whistles, but neither does it feel crippled. It is perfectly functional in the field, has quick enough autofocus to keep up with action, and is good enough optically that I never hesitated to shoot with it wide open.
There will almost certainly be some third party competitors for this lens that will arrive in the future. I suspect Sigma, Tamron, and Viltrox, among others, will invade the Z mount space more completely in the future, but I also think there will always be a place for the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4. It’s a reasonably priced first party lens that delivers a fast maximum aperture at a very popular focal length for a reasonable price. Kudos to Nikon for making what I think will be a populist kind of lens – a lens for the people.
Pros:
Great price to performance ratio for a first party lens
Smaller and light than competing 50mm F1.4 lenses
Weather sealed
Has control ring
Autofocus is fast enough to keep up with action
Video AF works pretty well
Good magnification
Good wide open sharpness
Excellent contrast when stopped down a bit
Bokeh is nice
Flare resistance is solid
Real world images look good
Consistent sharpness across the frame when stopped down
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I’ve had a long lasting love affair with vintage glass. Even though my contemporary lens collection features dozens of great lenses, I still have 6 or 7 vintage lenses that I enjoy taking out periodically. Some of those include classic SMC Takumars and Zeiss lenses, while others include some of the cult classics like Soviet Helios and Jupiter lenses. The latter category I have prized because of their unique “swirly” bokeh. These lenses are often optical designs derived from Carl Zeiss, and almost all of the lenses I own are based on the old M42 screw mount. Many of these lenses have gotten some revival in the mirrorless era, as they can be fairly easily adapter and mirrorless cameras have manual focus aids that make using them easier than ever. There is a subset of photographers who are turned off by modern lenses that are perfectly corrected, and they are more interested in lenses with some individuality and character.
I’ve wasted a lot of time down the eBay rabbit hole trying to find some of these classic gems at a reasonable price, but some of them are surprisingly expensive. The Zeiss Biotar 75mm F1.5 can cost thousands of dollars. But what if you could get a modern version of that exact lens for under $300? If that sounds intriguing, join me in exploring the unique TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 in either my video review or my text review…or just enjoy the photos in the gallery.
Thanks to TTArtisan for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
TTArtisan has chosen one of the three different housing designs this optical formula had in the past, which is often called the “Fat Version” that was sold from 1952-1967. The end result is a stubby lens that reminds me a lot of the recent Voigtländer Nokton 75mm F1.5 that I reviewed earlier this year. It has the scalloped focus ring, all metal body, and anodized finish of that lens.
This is built around that same old M42 mount, so that comes with both blessings and curses that we will explore. The upside is that the M42 is easily adaptable to a wide variety of lens mounts, up to and including Fuji’s medium format GF mount. I used to mostly use M42 glass on Canon EF mount, where the adapters would be quite slim, but because of the different flange distance on mirrorless cameras, you have to use much thicker adapters to get the optics where they need to be. You can see that the Vello adapter I used here is pretty chunky, which adds a fair bit of length to the overall package, unfortunately.
Initially the lens didn’t lineup quite right for me, but fortunately they have thought about that, as you can mount the lens to your camera, and then use the included allen key to loosen three screws near the lens mount, which will then allow you to rotate the lens to the proper position before tightening it back down.
It’s a good solution to a common problem with lenses like this. There’s no question this is an interesting lens with a lot of character. See that character in the images below.
Keywords: TTArtisan, 75mm, F1.5, swirl, swirly bokeh, TTArtisan 75mm review, M42, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 61MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #Alpha1, #A7RV
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I’ve had a long lasting love affair with vintage glass. Even though my contemporary lens collection features dozens of great lenses, I still have 6 or 7 vintage lenses that I enjoy taking out periodically. Some of those include classic SMC Takumars and Zeiss lenses, while others include some of the cult classics like Soviet Helios and Jupiter lenses. The latter category I have prized because of their unique “swirly” bokeh. These lenses are often optical designs derived from Carl Zeiss, and almost all of the lenses I own are based on the old M42 screw mount. Many of these lenses have gotten some revival in the mirrorless era, as they can be fairly easily adapter and mirrorless cameras have manual focus aids that make using them easier than ever. There is a subset of photographers who are turned off by modern lenses that are perfectly corrected, and they are more interested in lenses with some individuality and character.
I’ve wasted a lot of time down the eBay rabbit hole trying to find some of these classic gems at a reasonable price, but some of them are surprisingly expensive. The Zeiss Biotar 75mm F1.5 can cost thousands of dollars. But what if you could get a modern version of that exact lens for under $300? If that sounds intriguing, join me in exploring the unique TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 in either my video review or the text review that continues below.
Thanks to TTArtisan for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
TTArtisan has chosen one of the three different housing designs this optical formula had in the past, which is often called the “Fat Version” that was sold from 1952-1967. The end result is a stubby lens that reminds me a lot of the recent Voigtländer Nokton 75mm F1.5 that I reviewed earlier this year. It has the scalloped focus ring, all metal body, and anodized finish of that lens.
This is built around that same old M42 mount, so that comes with both blessings and curses that we will explore. The upside is that the M42 is easily adaptable to a wide variety of lens mounts, up to and including Fuji’s medium format GF mount. I used to mostly use M42 glass on Canon EF mount, where the adapters would be quite slim, but because of the different flange distance on mirrorless cameras, you have to use much thicker adapters to get the optics where they need to be. You can see that the Vello adapter I used here is pretty chunky, which adds a fair bit of length to the overall package, unfortunately.
Initially the lens didn’t lineup quite right for me, but fortunately they have thought about that, as you can mount the lens to your camera, and then use the included allen key to loosen three screws near the lens mount, which will then allow you to rotate the lens to the proper position before tightening it back down.
It’s a good solution to a common problem with lenses like this. Let’s take a closer look at the performance.
Build and Handling
The TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 Swirl has classic good looks. The lens has some heft to it, weighing in at roughly 570g (20oz). I measure the lens at roughly 73mm in diameter and about 72mm in overall length. The lens will grow an additional 10mm in length when focused to the minimum focus distance (externally focusing).
We have a common 58mm front filter thread on the front of the lens.
There are two rings on the lens. The first is the manual focus ring, which is the widest part of the lens and has easy to grip metal knurls.
There are etched distance markings with metric in white and Imperial distances in yellow. The lens barrel before the ring has hyperfocal markings (from F1.5 to F16) on it.
The second ring is near the front, and it a manual aperture ring. This is a clicked aperture with detents at the half stop position from F1.5 to F5.6, then only full stops. There are markings for each full aperture (starting at F1.5, then F2, F2.8, etc…). The aperture ring moves with nice precision.
There are thirteen rounded aperture blades inside that make for a pretty sexy looking aperture.
Minimum focus distance is 75cm, and the resulting magnification is not particularly high (probably in the 0.10x range).
There is no weather sealing, no electronics, or anything particularly modern. You’ll need to manually set the focal length for in-camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped. You will also miss a lot of EXIF data (only the camera based information like shutter speed and ISO will be recorded, though if you are shooting on Nikon you’ll have a chance to manually input some of that information).
The front cap is an old school threaded variety.
All told this is a nicely made lens that focuses nicely, has good aperture control, and costs a whole lot less than grabbing one of the classic lenses it emulates.
Manual Focus on Sony (Alpha 1 and a7RV)
When I first moved to Sony bodies, I found them a wonderful platform for manual focus. They had IBIS (in-body-image-stabilization), good viewfinders, and much more manual focus aids than the DSLRs that I was accustomed to. Since that point, however, essentially the whole industry has shifted to mirrorless cameras, so those advantages aren’t as distinct anymore. But I still found the TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 Swirl an easy lens to use on my Sony bodies and found that I could easily nail focus despite the large maximum aperture and narrow depth of field. Here’s a few reasons why:
EVF. An electronic viewfinder has a lot of advantages over an optical viewfinder when it comes to using manual focus lenses. You have the ability to see overlays, magnify the image to confirm focus, and as a byproduct I really didn’t have any misses. I don’t always love Sony’s viewfinders due to them going a bit weird when you half-depress the shutter for stabilization, but focus is still really easy due to the EVF.
Effective IBIS (Steadyshot Inside). Sony was a pioneer with IBIS, and while other companies have caught up and even surpassed them, having the ability to stabilize the viewfinder or LCD screen image while focusing makes manual focus much easier. You can hold that image still while you pull focus to the perfect point.
Useful manual focus aids. Sony’s options include the ability to have a color overlay to help to show what is in focus, though I will note that this works better when shooting at larger apertures and at close to medium distances. At longer distances where more is in focus, the color overlays can just become distracting, and just because a lot is in focus doesn’t yet mean that focus is where you want it. I prefer the secondary method, which is to enable an automatic magnification of the focus area whenever you turn the focus ring. This allows you to visually confirm focus is where you want it, and it is pretty foolproof. Sony’s system will both automatically magnify the focus area when you turn the focus ring and then also switch back to the full view when you go to depress the shutter so that you can ensure your composition is still what you want.
I own four different brands of camera (Sony, Canon, Nikon, and Fujifilm), and I can safely say that manually focusing on each of them is really quite easy…even when focusing on very shallow depths of field.
It is worth noting that the beautiful focus ring also makes doing focus pulls during video a treat. There’s nothing quite like a well calibrated true manual focus ring for smooth pulls.
TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 Swirl Image Quality Breakdown
This “swirl” lens has an extremely simple optical design of 6 elements in 4 groups. Two of those are HR elements.
Lenses like this are all about the rendering, the “look”, and not about their technical proficiency. I haven’t seen an MTF chart that looks this bad in a long, long time!
There’s a huge disparity between the wide open performance and the stopped down performance. The corners are particularly weak, but that’s essentially part of the design. The “swirl” that is so desirable in these lenses actually comes from uncorrected aberrations in the sagittal plane. In fact, most of the unique and desirable qualities we like about vintage glass come from optical defects, which is why modern lenses often feel fairly “clinical” by comparison. There’s a lot of defects in this image…but that’s a big part of the charm!
On the technical side of things, there is relatively little distortion and vignette.
There is a very small amount of barrel distortion (+3 to correct) and under 2 stops of vignette (+45 to correct). Neither metric is bad at all, which is good, as obviously lenses without electronics like this won’t get any kind of in camera corrections.
Not so good, however, is color fringing, particularly in high contrast situations. This is not a lens that will always hold up well when there are brighter lights in the frame. You’ll also see some color fringing before and after the plan of focus, and a general spherical aberrations that softens contrast (what we often euphemistically call “dreamy rendering”).
Other shots in lower contrast situations look better.
Stopping down a bit helps with the fringing in most situations.
Control of Lateral CA was pretty much perfect. The transition from black to white is flawless near the edge of the frame.
We can clearly guess that at large apertures, this is not going to be a very sharp lens, particularly when we consider that I am testing on a much higher resolution point than any classic lens had to deal with. All of my chart tests are shot on the 61MP Sony a7RV sensor with crops shown at roughly 200% magnification. Here’s a look at the test chart, which looks a bit like it is warping due to the unique optical signature of this lens.
And here are the F1.5 crops from across the frame:
There’s actually a decent amount of detail in the center of the frame, but you can also see that some fringing is reducing contrast, giving the textures a bit of a “bloom” to them. The midframe and corners are softer still, but it is mostly due to having very low contrast.
That’s all part of the unique look of the lens, however.
I did note some of the typical quirks with metering as I stopped the lens down for my test chart results. I found that I needed to bias results sometimes to keep metering accurate. As I got into the smaller apertures, it was not unusual to get underexposed results like below if I didn’t.
Stopping down to F2 will increase contrast a bit and eliminate a lot of the fringing. You can see that the whole image looks cleaner and brighter.
If we look in the center of the frame, we can see that the resolution and contrast have picked up considerably. It’s like a whole new lens.
The corners are a different story, however, as, while they are brighter, then look like they are in a fog and the sun is just starting to come out a bit!
Corners never get pin sharp, though they are pretty decent by F5.6:
Landscape apertures of F4-F8 look pretty good other than the extreme edges of the frame.
As expected on a high resolution body, diffraction will hit after F8, softening the image a bit at F11 and more so at F16, which is minimum aperture.
So sharpness and contrast will vary dependent on the aperture you choose, which does give you some flexibility with the kinds of images that you can create with the lens.
But if you are buying this lens for sharpness, you’ve missed the point. This is a lens that is more about what’s out of focus than what is in focus. So let’s talk about that bokeh. First of all, the lens is very capable of producing soft, creamy bokeh. Here’s a look at a scene where I’ve pulled focus back to minimum so everything is out of focus.
There’s actually a specific difference where the swirl is most pronounced. That will be shooting at F1.5 and a medium distance of about two meters.
If I focus further, we can see that there is relatively little swirl effect, so it really only works with the background, not the foreground.
On a practical level, this effect works best when there is something on either side of the subject to serve as the bokeh subject. Putting your subject near the center of the frame works better than composing in the rule of thirds zone, as the plane of sharpness is mostly located in the center of the frame and you can get better subject separation. I put my subject in the rule of thirds for this shot, but it doesn’t work as well.
The effect will be more pronounced with a larger sensor. Medium format users will see the biggest effect, while APS-C cameras will crop off a lot of the swirly look. You can obviously get a fair bit of the effect on full frame as well (as shown in this review).
Stop down a bit, and you can get a more conventional image, like this:
Likewise for landscape shots. Shooting at F5.6 or F8 makes for a pretty conventional looking image.
Flare results are going to be situational. In certain positions there’s a general veiling over a shot, like this:
At wider apertures you may see a ghosting artifact like this:
At its best, you can get some fairly artistic effects that really go along with the vintage charm of the lens.
I would say the results are generally better than some of the vintage glass I’ve used, but not as corrected as a modern lens with effective coatings.
I would say that color is good in most situations. Here, for example, it looks great:
It’s also great here.
But if you are shooting high contrast scenes at large apertures, the general lack of contrast can make colors look a little dull.
I would say that this is both part of the charm and the liability of a lens with vintage sensibilities. Use the TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 “Swirl” to its strengths, and you can get much more interesting images than a conventional lens. Use it poorly, and you’ll just get low contrast, mushy images that neither you or your audience will enjoy. You can see more images by visiting the lens image gallery here.
Conclusion
I’ve definitely intentionally sought out some of the “swirl” lenses myself in the past. It is great to see TTArtisan bringing back some of these fun and interesting optics to a modern audience in the TTArtisan 75mm F1.5.
This lens has to be evaluated with a different set of criteria than my typical lens review, because by definition this swirl lens in embracing certain optical flaws that make for visually interesting results.
Yes, you can get conventional looking results with this lens at small apertures, but that’s not really the reason to buy it.
The real reason to buy this lens is to fully embrace the swirly flaws and to shoot the kinds of images you’ll never get with almost all modern lenses. And with a price tag of just $270 USD, you don’t have to break the bank to get it. Just remember to pick up a cheap adapter for your preferred mount if you don’t already have one!
Pros:
The swirl!
Nicely built lens
Well executed focus and aperture rings
Low distortion
Bright aperture
Good sharpness when stopped down
Nice color in some situations
Unique and special rendering
Much cheaper than trying to find a vintage lens that does the same thing
Keywords: TTArtisan, 75mm, F1.5, swirl, swirly bokeh, TTArtisan 75mm review, M42, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 61MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #Alpha1, #A7RV
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
When I began to wholesale move to mirrorless, there were certain beloved lenses that were very slow to leave my kit. I had a whole kit of Canon EF lenses, and initially I just adapted those lenses to Canon RF and even Sony. Certain third party lenses slowly began to leave my kit to be replaced with other lenses, but I had a core kit of L series lenses that I found it hard to say goodbye to. Lenses like the 24-104mm F4L IS, 100mm F2.8L Macro, the 70-300L, the 100-400L II, and the 35mm F1.4L II. One by one those lenses slowly got sold off over the years. The last of them remained until 2023, and that was the Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II. I loved that lens. Built like a tank, sharp as a tack, and with utterly reliable results that I consistently loved. It was hard for me to say goodbye to that lens, largely because there really wasn’t an RF replacement for it.
Pretty much everyone wondered when Canon would come up with a replacement, as the RF 50mm F1.2L was one of the early RF L series lenses, coming to market in 2018. I reviewed it in 2019 after finally taking the plunge and buying the extremely flawed Canon EOS R body. That means that six years have gone by without a pro series 35mm lens on RF mount, with the only 35mm prime being the RF 35mm F1.8 IS. But the wait is over, and the Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM has finally arrived. Is this the one you’ve been waiting for? You can get my findings in the video review here, or by reading the text review here.
Thanks to Camera Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*I have done this review on my Canon EOS R5 camera.
Canon’s earliest full frame mirrorless cameras (the EOS R and the EOS RP) were severely flawed cameras, so my early frustration in doing RF mount reviews is that it seemed that a number of the early RF lenses were so good but the cameras were so frustrating. Ironically (at least for me), the tables have turned, as Canon has been producing a number of cameras I really like (I’ve loved owning my EOS R5 for years, and have given very positive reviews to a number of other cameras from the budget R8 to the premium R3.) But I’ve found Canon’s lens design over the past few years very frustrating, as it seems like every lens I review comes with a major caveat. The RF 100mm Macro has weird focus shift issues. The RF 14-35mm F4L IS has epic levels of distortion. The 70-200mm models can’t be used with teleconverters. The RF 100-500L can only use teleconverters at 300mm+. The RF 85mm F2 Macro IS has clunky autofocus. A number of the zooms have very slow apertures. It’s a little weird, and unfortunately that trend continues with the 35L VCM lens, as while it has great autofocus and is very sharp, there are some questionable choices in the implementation of features and optical design. Sigh.
In many ways the 35L VCM seems to be a lens designed with video in mind more than stills. There is one notable new feature that only works for video unless you have a Canon camera made in 2024 or newer. But on the other hand, Canon also knows how to make a optically strong 35mm lens, and the 35L VCM actually comes to market at a $300 discount relative to the 35L II.
While aspects of the lens are a little perplexing, the simple reality is that it is easy to make beautiful images with the Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM. Check out some examples in the galleries below.
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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